At the end of 1999, the census population of Helsinki was 551,000, but that of the urbanized Helsinki region (four communes) had grown to 946,000, 18 per cent of Finland's total population. The registered Swedish-speaking population, for city and region alike, was just under 7 per cent. This percentage represented some 66,000 Swedish speakers in the capital region. The legal requirements for bilingual services in the public sector and the courts remained in place, but in daily practice the language capacity of public servants to deliver them had undoubtedly declined. Most Swedishspeaking Finns living in the capital are adequately bilingual, and seldom make an issue of this. Increasingly, they are compensated in other wavs. as will be seen below.